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12 January 2010

12 January 2010

The National Trust is founded in Britain in 1895. (Hello, andysays!) The first long-distance wireless message was sent from the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1908, and in 1984, Mark Thatcher went missing in the Sahara. Unfortunately, they found him again after six days.

Even the opening sentence just makes me want to smash something, where does she get the fucking nerve? The graun doesnt give a shit what it prints, as long as its a big name and brings in the comments they couldnt care less.

Incidentally, for all people suffering with Radio4 outages at midnight, have received response from the 'webteam'"There's a technical issue that is causing this to happen and the engineers are trying to fix it"Every night at the stroke of midnight, there's a technical issue? Presumably the server turns back into a pumpkin and the IT team into a bunch of white mice...

Great minds think alike about Mrs B talking about Freedom and Democracy (TM). Stupid and ill-thought-out turn of phrase from her. Which makes me wonder if she actually wrote the article or simply rubber-stamped it.

Having said that, I was at a conference once where she and a panel of HR barristers were talking about the HRA before it came into force, and she got very snitty when I suggested that the HRA was a dog with no teeth, and was more than happy to trot out Tone's party line on his behalf. This must have been 98, so already the line between Cherie Booth QC and Mrs Blair the PM's wife was beginning to be seriously smudged.

Medve - UK Midnight, as it goes just as the news comes on. Could be that they have to restart the something or other because it can't automatically switch over to the new day? Bit worrying if so...

BB - the article itself is pretty solid, but as I feared, the thread is being hijacked by a) hatred of the blairs and b) criticism of aligning Mrs Blair (as she is holding herself out today) with mr Blair. Chances of getting an actual debate going? Hmmmm....

I cant remember exactly medve, nothing special, just queried the suitability of Cherie, husband of war criminal who invaded a third world country, as well as reneging on a commitment to allowing a referendum on bringing an actually democratic voting system to Britain, etc, just said it was an astonishing nerve for her to lecture anyone on "freedom and democracy", and particularly in the ME. The audacity of the piece is just astonishing.

I found her line about "suggestions that Britain had encouraged dissent in Iran" or something also irritating. We may not have in this case, but her smug tone as if its something democratic Britain would never stoop to just really annoyed me.

She's appalling, and as for Blair himself, he's beyond words these days...

I have fallen into that trap too, I guess. But on the other hand, the brilliant timing of this sudden outpouring of sympathy for a religious group that has been persecuted in Iran for donkey's years is a bit convenient imo.

I suppose it would be futile to point out that no matter what you think of Cherie Blair, she is presumably an independent woman with her own views. Or perhaps she's just an obedient little wife who does what her hubby tells her, an inseparable entity from Tony, and who is therefore equally culpable for his many shortcomings? In which case it's obviously perfectly OK to castigate her for his actions. Not very progressive though, is it? One might almost say sexist! ;o)

Philippa, it should have been obvious to everyone from the start that Chowdry never had any intention of marching in Woolton Bassett. The whole situation should have been ignored until he actually applied for a permit. Had it been granted, his supporters would have been carrying about 50 coffins each. Presumably they would have been cardboard scale-models. (A bit like the Stonehenge in Spinal Tap's stage show.)Yet this pathetic fucking nutter gets days and days of 24/7 publicity and has just been on 5Live refusing to answer a question on how much he receives in state benefits.

Now although I do not always agree with him but he is a politician that I can trust. I would like to clone him as there are no longer enough like him.

Example this on the enviroment:

'Put simply, if there are ten survivors in a lifeboat after a shipwreck and they have one loaf of bread, there are only three ways that the loaf can be distributed: it can be bought by the richest; it can be fought for by the strongest; or it can be shared equally amongst the ten on board.'

Scherfig - of course she's her own woman. She decided to stick by him. Presumably she knew about the sexed-up dossiers and other ridiculous excuses for poodling - she's not stupid and most of the rest of us worked it out.

Scherf - as I said, had she not spouted the party line so unthinkingly and virtually verbatim at a conference on the HRA, I would be more willing to believe that she is her "own person", unaffected (uninfected?) by the New Labour spin machine.

I actually quite admire her in general, because she is a bloody good lawyer and far more intelligent than the bloke she married. She was, I believe, top of her year at the LSE (or certainly in the top 10%) and top of her year in the Bar Exams, which is no mean feat.

However, she allows party political dogma to colour her better judgment when she is speaking - or writing - publicly, and that annoys me immensely.

So no, I am not being sexist - I would say exactly the same thing about Dennis Thatcher if he had been no more than an additional mouthpiece for the Tories under his wife's tyranny. But he kept out of it - and I think spouses should keep the hell out of it, frankly.

Respectfully disagree: criticising a woman for her father's actions/beliefs would be sexist, but to assume that a woman doesn't choose her husband, and therefore at least tolerates his actions/beliefs is, in itself, sexist, no?

Of course one must also criticise men for their wives' beliefs/actions........

had she not spouted the party line so unthinkingly and virtually verbatim at a conference on the HRA, I would be more willing to believe that she is her "own person"

You're doing it again, BB. You are making the assumption that she spouted the party line 'unthinkingly', and that this was because of spin. You are also assuming that her 'better judgment' was coloured by dogma.

Have you considered the possiblity that she actually independently believed it? Or has she no moral autonomy at all? After all, thousands of people believed that shit without being married to Tony Blair.

scherf - nope. She was there to big up hubby. Others on the panel - including one chap who is in the same chambers as her and a Labour member - were prepared to explore and examine different aspects of the strengths and weaknesses of the HRA as it was being proposed in 98. All she was willing to do was to spout Labour policy.

I am sure she is capable of making her own decisions about things. I am also sure that she was able to see which side her bread was buttered.

If she had not opened her article the way she did, but gone straight to the main meat of the subject, I would have viewed it in a completely different way, as it goes. But she chose to use the Freedom and Democracy (TM) line which has been so overused to define whacking a country that doesn't toe the line that it got my goat and, as far as I am concerned, reinforced my view that she is more interested in supporting Tone than she is in making her point clearly and effectively.

BB, what do you mean by 'more interested in supporting Tone'? He's not PM any more. If you mean that she's spinning some government policy line, well, maybe she is. Although, if I recall correctly, she called Brown a liar on the Labour Party Conference platform, so why should she push Brown's political agenda?

"can every abused wife/husband be criticized for firstly, choosing their partner and secondly, continuing to tolerate their behaviour?"

Can they? Yes (more for the latter than the former: people can hide things in the early stages of relationships). Should they? (is it helpful to anyone) No. The last thing an abused partner needs to be told is that it's even partly their fault that it continues: in their fragile mental state they'll probably believe it's totally their fault and that they "deserve" it (two totally different things)*.

"btw, I wonder how many divorces there were in the UK at the time of the Iraq invasion. Given that public support was roughly 50/50,there must have been millions of divided households."

Apart from the fact that the split was probably between households much more than within (due to a tendency to marry someone with similar values) I would draw a distinction between tolerating someone's beliefs and tolerating someone's actions: could an animal rights activist be married to a scientist performing animal experiments? Probably not. Could two married estate agents who differed in their beliefs as to whether animal experimentation was justified stay married? Probably.

*BTW I'm treading shades of grey here that I'd never dare do on CiF, because I know you lot are reasonable adults capable of distinguishing them.............

Cherie didnt have to stay with Tony, she makes an awful lot of money as it is, she is an intelligent, independent woman, the kids are grown up, it is beyond dispute she knows full what happened with Iraq, to the extent that Tony did at least - which is enough.

I think we can say with some confidence that she is fully aware that her husband engaged in an illegal occupation causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. She also knows that he, and her, are currently making many millions of dollars largely off the back of that support for US aggression. Blood money is no problem to her.

She's still with him. She's still taking that money, indeed she recently remarked that she "still worries if they have enough [money]". They have reportedly made over £18mil since he left office.

I dont think "sexism" is relevant here really, I'm sure Merkel's husband knows exactly what goes on in that administration. If Merkel wages an illegal invasion i would find it equally laughable for her husband to come on these pages preaching on "freedom and democracy."

""btw, I wonder how many divorces there were in the UK at the time of the Iraq invasion. Given that public support was roughly 50/50,there must have been millions of divided households."

As dot suggests, i think this argument breaks down because one is an opinion and one is an active policy - Blair was responsible for Iraq, he didnt merely agree with it. He was central to engineering the invasion.

Also, couples in the UK at the time had very imperfect information to go on, largely as a result of Blairs mendacity (and democratic failings).

Scherf - who knows what her agenda is now, but without a doubt Tone is still in the pocket of the neo-cons, if you ask me. And, by default, she must be too. Perhaps this is a precursor to a "diplomatic effort" by hubby in his role as "special envoy" *cough splutter*

Apart from the fact that the split was probably between households much more than within (due to a tendency to marry someone with similar values)

Some truth in this, but given the very polarised reactions to Iraq in the UK, there were no doubt hundreds of thousands of households where one partner supported invasion and the other did not.

Anyway, the actions/belief dichotomy is more interesting. There were millions of British citizens who passionately held the same beliefs as Blair regarding Iraq. The difference is only that they did not have the power of action, whereas Blair and the politicians did. Were they in Blair's position, they would have acted in the same way. From a moral point of view, and within a relationship, this divide between belief and action is much less clear-cut. And when the actions were carried out in reality by the British forces, active (or even passive)support for these actions blurs the boundary even further.

Further thought. It's like playground bullies. Just as kids will egg a bully on to hit another kid, millions of UK citizens urged Blair to invade Iraq. Whether the information was dodgy or not, Jay, Blair had widespread support. And then the teacher appears in the playground. And all the cheerleaders say, 'It wasn't me, sir. It was him. He hit him.'

"There were millions of British citizens who passionately held the same beliefs as Blair regarding Iraq. The difference is only that they did not have the power of action, whereas Blair and the politicians did. Were they in Blair's position, they would have acted in the same way."

But you are forgetting the realities, Scherf. Blair *wasnt* under the impression that Saddam posed a threat, or had WMDs - he knew the situation pretty well, the intelligence at the time, as has now been made available, painted a fairly clear picture - information was sketchy, but it was unlikely he had weapons. Inspection teams has repeatedly confirmed that his weapons program had been "all but wiped out" in the 90s.

Consider too, evidence of his pledging of near unconditional support for the US and for regime change. It was nothing to do with WMD, of course Blair didnt really think our bases in Cyprus were going to be nuked by Saddam - its completely impausible. Remember his recent remarks, if there hadnt been wmd he would still have gone to war, he just would have had to find new ways of putting the case forward.

On the other hand, the story fed by Blair and helped along by our shameless media was that there was very strong evidence of WMD. The public arent blameless, but then again most people didnt support the war, they called it for what it was.

So you have a man making the decision to actively engage in illegal invasion and war crimes despite knowing with some confidence his nation was in no threat, compared to a public fed a picture from authority of actual danger.

I dont think you can honestly compare these two situations in the way you have.

"Whether the information was dodgy or not, Jay, Blair had widespread support."

Well it *was* dodgy, and it was Blair that made it dodgy, and of course that has an impact when judging his "widespread support". He created support by lying to the people and parliament. Would most people kill half a millions civilians to make a few millions dollars? I'd like to think not. I'd hope also plenty of women would have left him when the truth outed.

I'd add also, Scherf, regardless of the question of her complicity pr obligation to leave him, assuming we agreed its morally fine to stay with him, would you not find it slightly crass, as the very least, for her to make money by writing about "freedom and democracy" in Iran?

OK, I'll come clean. Some years ago, just after I had split up with Iris Robinson, Cherie and I had a long passionate affair. (Jay, she was not quite as crass then as she is now, honestly.) It ended amicably enough, but I really can't stand her now. Tony never knew about us, so please regard this as confidential.

Jay.Interesting all this. Well I'm someone sho did support the invasion and came to regret it. I supported it because I was still under the impression that interventions could be worthwhile (Sierra Leone), and that there had been without a shadow of doubt that Milosevic's regime were inent on further mass murder in Kosovo. I also knew for a fact that the UK, under Robin Cook's steerage were finally getting some real pressure on France to recognise Burmese brutality and stop vetoing EU action on Burma.

I thought we owed it to countries, like Iraq, where our predessessors had installed bastards for our own ends, to aid those oppressed by our tory predecessors' bastards, in getting rid of them. How much naivity would you like ? But it's the truth. There seemed little doubt that Hussein's long term ambitions of taking on the Saudis hadn't changed (Gulf War I was his first stab at this), and that even if he wasn't processing WMD at the time, he certainly had the motivation and means to pursue this end of dominating the region.

Like an idiot I actually beleived the invasion would be followed by a full and internationally supported transtional period of assembling a new state, using existing Iraqui expertise where viable, and then agreeing and styicking to an exit strategy that insisted on justice, democracy, law and order above all else.

I duped myself into believing those bastards would deliver for the Iraqis. Mea culpa.

My other half always smelled a rat, and didn't like Blair anyways, so we had our debates.

BW - im not attacking people for supporting the war based on what was offered, both downing st and the media colluded to present a strong, but fictitious, case. The combination of the two is undoubtedly very powerful (media and government that is).

I wasnt even particularly politically engaged at that time so i can make no claim to prior wisdom myself, i didnt support the war but this was almost entirely the result of my family's influence.

Im just making the point to our resident lothario, Scherf, that to compare a disagreement between your and your partner to the situation between Cherie and Tony just doesnt stand up i dont think.

But since he has come clean about his porking of the fine lady in question i am prepared to forgive and forget ;)

Having just heard a clip of Campbell 'explaining' why he didn't feel the need to correct stories in the press he knew to be incorrect ("If they'd just rung the press office...") I am considering arming myself with something. Anybody else?

Plus - heron? cool.

at today's french lesson, learnt some interesting animal vocab.

un blaireau = a badger. pity, i like badgers.

and if colin ever posts on an Agnes Poirier thread, he can do so as ColinLaHermine.

"They also mistakenly see virtual organisations – based upon a large list of email addresses, an expensive website, and a fickle coterie of Guardian journalists guaranteeing nauseatingly uncritical coverage – as an alternative to a party of committed activists, rooted and working within their communities"

Hmm, read that. The author is vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, the only privately owned university in the UK, and caters largely for overseas students.

The Times had this to say about the UofB:

"We rank the private university of Buckingham for the first time in our main league table this year. Top for student satisfaction, with the lowest level of graduate unemployment, the best student/staff ratio and the lowest dropout rate compared to benchmark, Buckingham makes quite an entrance."

"Relatively low entry standards, a low proportion of high-class degrees awarded and its absence from formal assessment of research quality means it just makes it into the top 50, but there is no mistaking its outstanding performance in some areas."

"Opened in 1976, it offers a range of just over 60 undergraduate degrees across four faculties: law, business, humanities, and science and medicine. A four-term year allows students to cram into two years an honours degree that it takes three years to complete in the state sector."

"The accent is on flexibility: there are three start dates for many courses in January, July and September and while two-year courses are the norm, it is also possible to incorporate work experience into degree programmes."

"And the university claims this is available for less than the price of a degree at a conventional university. Although tuition fees are £8,640 next year, compared with £3,225 in the state sector, the fact that a degree can be gained in one year less at Buckingham means the cost of a course (assuming £8,000 a year living costs) can be just under £1,000 cheaper at Buckingham."

Bascially it's a privately funded degree factory for getting overseas people jobs and holds no research element. Nice work if you can get it. Kushty. This makes him an expert in what ?

BTW, I think they should make all university places preferential to atheists. Then, no matter how much their parents had abused the system by buying into elitist church schools, their kids would be fucked.

"I genuinely believe that socially and economically we're regressing back to the 1850's."

Yup. Fed up with it. But most of all I'm fed up with the proliferation of Alf Garnett Tories who think that the Tory party will make them rich. What kind of political party, at a time of deep recession, wants to cut inheritance tax as one of their first actions in government? And how the hell is it that people can't see right through what they are up to?

Bitterweed - "I think they should make all university places preferential to atheists"

Interesting idea. You do however realise that this would result in lots of middle-class helicopter types turning up to Humanist meetings and taking over, and the Darwin summer camp being overwhelmed with applications from wannabe volunteers...

Would be interesting to see how they'd handle it if a younger child was still in the system - perhaps a quickie divorce with one parent seeking spiritual direction from the vicar while the other rejects all theology and goes to work for Ariane Sherine?

interesting, thanks for that. It embodies everything that I find repellent regarding the provision of education- Education as a commodity.

I made the point on the Jeremy Gilbert thread earlier today that once access to Education is determined by ability to pay and not the academic ability, then the country is fucked.

BB, agree with you there. I would also add that morally we are returning to 19th Century thinking- the poor are poor because they deserve to be. Money invested in the poor is money wasted. They only have themselves to blame etc etc.

Goddam, the more I think about it, the more I think the class struggle is becoming more intense than ever.

Any idea what's up with yahoo? It won't let me (+2 more people) sign in any more. I had a job app to email yesterday & had to borrow someone else's hotmail a/c to send the bloody thing. Just made it 15 mins before the deadline.

Hope this works (using phone). AFAIK, TB&CB had a pact from early days-whichever became an MP first,the other would support and advise.Total teamwork,and touching were it not undemocratic (how is the non-MP accountable to the public?),and had they not been venal,immoral,neo-liberal,spivvy twats.

'I genuinely believe that socially and economically we're regressing back to the 1850's.'

I think it's much worse than that actually. I spent a hair-raising 10 mins today watching the God Channel - some slimy smoothychops explaining how God had helped him beat the recession and make loads of money last year. It's a kind of reverse Calvinism - you know you are saved because God blesses you with material goods, indeed wealth is a sign of grace. It's a cancer that has spread from American evangelism.

You can smell it off Bush; his staggering complacency is that of the saved, and something of it hangs around Blair as well.

Been at tedious work all day. What the hell do you do with a more senior manager who only has a passing knowledge of what you do but insists on fiddling and faddling about making a total nuisance of themselves, coming up with stupid ideas and generally getting in the way?

Just catching up with news. Alastair Campbell's parting shot to the Chilcott inquiry, something like - Britain should be incredibly proud of taking out one of the worst regimes in history

I cannot face the Cherie B thread - had a quick look - everything seems to have been said already. Bahai'is have been persecuted since the mid 19th century - its taken her a while to notice. although John McDonnell cheered me up a bit.

You can smell it off Bush; his staggering complacency is that of the saved, and something of it hangs around Blair as well.

I'd never thought of it like that. Blair and Bush as calvinist predestinationists. It all makes sense now.

Much like Robert Wringhim believes he can murder with no consequence as he is 'predestined to be saved' in Hogg's 'Confessions of a justified sinner', Bush and Blair also believe their actions warrant no sanction either in this life or the next.

I have just been watching the most bizarre thing. A rerun of Eggheads where there was a team from a beauty salon against the Egghead team - with Jade Goody in the team, before she was Big Brothered... and she ended up in a head-to-head with the rest of them at the end. And it went to a tie breaker... jebus.

MsChin - I've just managed to sign into my (very old) Yahoo account. Two things: 1) It had picked up the UT sign-in to Flickr, so try logging out and logging again, 2) They wanted to me add a couple of security questions and an e-mail addy (the one I originally used to sign up with is long gone), which I had to verify by responding to the e-mail they sent me.

We never got that far...more one of those tantric sex things like Sting and Whatsherface...physical contact was right out..more an erotic mutual respect thingy...well horny apparently...or so she said...I kept falling asleep.

Yahoo have locked my account, maybe because I've had too many attempts to get into it or maybe it was locked before. Now can't remember what p/word I used for setting up the Flickr a/c. Bah! Never occured to me that it would cause a conflict with the bloody email. Now totally fegged off, in part because no one else in the house can get into their Yahoo a/cs either, which is why I'm confused. Are they locked because we share one pc?

MsChin - wot BB says, and somewhere there should be a way to unlock your account. When the message comes up, there ought to be a way for them to e-mail you with the password, once you pass the security questions, or something.

If you have multiple email addresses on the same id and password, then locking one locks them all. If not, then I doubt that Yahoo would bother doing IP address blocking which is the only other way to stop all access to multiple accounts through a single router.

The 'too many attempts' block is most likely, particularly if you have multiple people trying to access the same account.

I clear the cache every time I close Firefox, and have the other users trained to do same. Yahoo say I'm locked for 24 hours and I don't have an alternative email, so guess I'll have to sign up for one with google or summat.

Ta muchly for the help. I just can't get me head round these things sometimes!

We all have different log-in IDs for Yahoo email & so far I'm the only one locked, I think, but no-one else can get into their emails anyway. And it's only Yahoo that's affected, the email a/c I borrowed yesterday was hotmail & was Ok.

Huh, that further info is seriously weird. Does sound like some sort of IP-blocking. You could always open a cmd prompt and type in: ipconfig /renew ... that might possibly do it. Or it might be /flush ... can't remember.

Sorry to leave you high and dry, but woke up before 3 this morning and never did manage to get back to sleep, so am off to hit the pillow.

It appears that Yahoo Mail had some odd outages a couple of months back, which never seemed to be tracked down definitively and affected a seemingly random group of users. Maybe it's back. In which case, all you can do is report it and wait (while signing up for a GMail account in the interim).

It would be interesting to see if you can pick up your Yahoo mail over POP3 from the GMail account when you have one, which would also diagnose where the problem lies and perhaps prevent you missing any important messages,

Yep, Ms Casey is not very pleasant. At work, I once got sent in someone's place to a conference or something where she was the *star turn*, ghastly experience.

She's just looking for a way to keep the funding coming for the Family Intervention Projects, because its not secure. And in some ways, I don't blame her, as they seem worthwhile despite the cost. Some of the kids in these 'top 10 problem families in the area' intervention projects have mental health and /or behavioural problems which is partly why they're causing chaos. But you will know all this, I guess.

My own technological problems today involved a power cut for several hours, which reminded me just how tenuous modern life is (and also reminded me that I won't be voting for Caroline Lucas in the forthcoming election). Sitting hunched under a duvet with a scratchy transistor radio was like a reminder of the early 70s.

And, speaking of which now I'm back online, YouTube has everything. I was remembering a presciently-titled album by a band called Burnin' Red Ivanhoe, which I bought in a bargain bin for 25p when I was at University because it was on John Peel's Dandelion label and so couldn't be totally awful.

A great thing, that electricity stuff. Not sure which is worse, a power cut or the water supply being stopped for hours ... Also had no phone for a week after the bloody exchange burnt down a few years ago, I think we got thruppence h'apenny compensation for it.

Anyway, you must have been posh, to have a duvet in the 70s, the rest of us had blankets & eiderdowns!

Speaking of duvets, I'm off to reacquaint myself with mine. Thanks for the help & good tonight.